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Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and Students

If I lived in Massachussetts, I'd be very alarmed about this:

Governor Mitt Romney raised the prospect of wiretapping mosques and conducting surveillance of foreign students in Massachusetts, as he issued a broad call yesterday for the federal government to devote far more money and attention to domestic intelligence gathering.

In remarks that caused alarm among civil libertarians and advocates for immigrants rights, Romney said in a speech to the Heritage Foundation ... ''How many individuals are coming to our state and going to those institutions who have come from terrorist-sponsored states?" he said, referring to foreign students who attend universities in Massachusetts. ''Do we know where they are? Are we tracking them?"

How did this guy get elected? First he wants to reinstate the death penalty with a law he claims is fail-safe, when no such law is possible, and now this. A giant raspberry to Gov. Romney.

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    He is just playing to the GED crowd in South Carolina that controls the nomination process of the GOP. Besides, he is an empty suit.

    As someone who grew up in Massachusetts (But has lived in Arizona for the last 15 years), I suspect folks back there thought they were getting another Bill Weld, ie., someone fairly conservative on fiscal matters but moderate to liberal on social issues. However, as anyone living in the rocky mountain west could tell you, mormons from Utah and the surrounding states aren't social liberals by any stretch of the imagination. Only after Romney took office did the people in Massachusetts catch on to this. He's worn out his welcome in a big way there. And with a potential presidential bid in the offing? He might as well be back in Utah.

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#3)
    by Edger on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:52 PM EST
    Mitt Romney: said, referring to foreign students who attend universities in Massachusetts. ''Do we know where they are? Are we tracking them? Larry: He's worn out his welcome in a big way there. And with a potential presidential bid in the offing? He might as well be back in Utah Mitt's not paranoid... They really are after him.

    I find this truly offensive. I was once a foreign student - in Massachusetts - and now a naturalized citizen. It was bad enough getting through the paperwork then (and not feeling particularly welcome). I can barely guess how many potential foreign students will be put off by this grandstanding.

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#5)
    by kdog on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:52 PM EST
    Somebody should explain the concept of "probable cause" to this un-american s.o.b. In America, you don't spy on people without probable cause that they are breaking the law. Crap like this gets my blood boiling.

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#6)
    by cpinva on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:52 PM EST
    i'm curious as to which "terrorist sponsored states" he's referring to, since MA certainly qualifies, historically (just ask the british). so, for that matter, would VA. i feel certain that mexico considers TX a state sponsor of terrorism as well. how did a mormon get elected gov. of MA to begin with? what, everyone was out to lunch that day?

    Romney wants to have a video camera installed up his arse, to make sure Martians don't invade without his knowledge. He wants to be the magistrate of Massachusetts, England. But, 'they' don't already bug mosques? Another failure of neo-fascism. How does Ubermarshall Rumsfeld sleep? No moleste mosque-ito.

    I feel a sudden urge to read about bioethics. Can anybody suggest a site or two?

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#9)
    by Sailor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:52 PM EST
    Quaker, Sure, but I can only recommend 1 bioethics site over and over;-) Back on topic: With the current patriot act how does he know they aren't ALREADY being wiretapped?

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#10)
    by soccerdad on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:52 PM EST
    Romney has taken a sharp turn to the right over the last year or so as his presidential aspirations have become clear. He is pandering to the Repub base. i mean how can you run for president on the Repub ticket without backing this kind of nonsense.

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#11)
    by Edger on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:52 PM EST
    Any good sites where I might read up on subliminal bioethics?

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#12)
    by BigTex on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:52 PM EST
    What an idea! Let's bug Fundamentalist churches too, we can catch anti-choice terrorists and other right-wingy extremists.What do yo mean, No?
    You make a good point... terrorist are terrorist, be it islamic, christian fundamentalists, ELF/ALF, right wing nut jobs, etc. We shouldn't descriminate in our desire to stop their activities.

    I live in Massachusetts and, yes, I'm very alarmed at this. I always thought of Romney as just another oleaginous preppy Republican but I never suspected that he could be such a snake. My kid is in college here in MA (UMass at Amherst) and I definitely do not like the idea of him being spied on. If I was a Muslim, I also wouldn't like the idea of my mosque being bugged a la George Orwell. I think I just found another A*sclown of the Week for this sunday.

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#14)
    by squeaky on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:52 PM EST
    jpork-What a great word. I can think of many at the WH who can be called oleaginous as well. :

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#15)
    by jimakaPPJ on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:52 PM EST
    et al - Can anyone tell us how many of the 9/11 terrorist hijackers were in the country on student visas? Anyone? Come on boys and girls, don't be shy.

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#16)
    by squeaky on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:52 PM EST
    ppj-Why stop there. Haliburton can contract Blackwell mercenaries to question and detain all men in the US between the ages of 25 and 38 who have have brownish skin. **EXTRA BONUS** It would cost so much that Social Security would have to be tapped and privatized. Two birds with one stone.

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#17)
    by jimakaPPJ on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:52 PM EST
    Squeaky - Based on your response, my question hit the mark dead solid perfect. You know Squeak, you just can't evade the truth. And the number was? Come on, come on. You can do it.

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#18)
    by Sailor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:52 PM EST
    Can anyone tell me the skin tone, nationality, religion and terrorsist training camp the convicted OK City bombers had in common?

    Can anyone tell us how many of the 9/11 terrorist hijackers were in the country on student visas?
    And how many non-hijackers were in the country on student visas at the time?

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#20)
    by squeaky on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:53 PM EST
    sailor-those were not terrorists, they were white guys. Just a few good ole boys that went to far, boys will be boys. Terrorists on the other hand are bent on wrenching our country away from us and are cowards.

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#21)
    by kdog on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:53 PM EST
    Let's implant everybody with an internal listening device at birth so we can hear everything everyone ever says....forever. You know...to be "safe".

    great idea Kdog. While we are at it, let's also make that chip part of the GPS system, to enable the govenment and our employer to be able to find us anywhere, anytime. While we're at it, let's install a system of internal passports, so we can keep an eye on the proles. After all, it worked so well for security in the former CCCP. Because NOTHING is more important than being safe from terrorists. Certainly not something silly like Personal Liberty as enshrined in the Bill of Rights. After all, the RWNJ's largely don't believe that pesky old bill applies to the states.

    if the churches are preaching death to abortion providers, you are damn right they should be investigated. Squeaky-do you think white supremacist organizations aren't/weren't investigated? as I recall, one white guy got the death penalty, one is serving a life sentence-hardly boys will be boys. By the way, please let me know what church recruited and sent the boys on their path of bombing. as far as Islamic terrorism and recruitment goes, it would be negligent in the extreme to avoid investigation and surveillance of mosques. or, since it is a "religion of peace", are we required to blind ourselves to the obvious.

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#24)
    by kdog on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:54 PM EST
    charley...I hope you would agree that probable cause must exist prior to any surveillance. You do believe in the Bill of Rights, don't you?

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#25)
    by kdog on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:54 PM EST
    Also Adept, every resident should be required to obtain a travel pass before leaving the house. Similar to a high-school hall pass. It's just not safe to have all these people out on the street without the authorities knowing what they are up to. It can be issued electronically to the internal tracking device, and if anyone would attempt to leave their home without permission, they would receive a shot of high voltage. Freedom scares me, we would all be much happier and safer in a totalitarian state.

    no, don't agree. First, an investigation is just that-no probable cause is needed to investigate anything. To obtain a warrant/make an arrest-Yes. any agency can send a person into a mosque to see what's going on during public services with no warrant/I hope we are doing so as intensely as possible . freedom doesn't scare me-allowing criminal conduct to go unimpeded because it might take place in a mosque, however, doesn't sound like freedom to me, just ignorance.

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#27)
    by squeaky on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:54 PM EST
    char-the term terrorist was never applied to any whites in America who have committed race based crimes, intending to terrorize 'the other' Why do think that is so? Here is what some dark skinned folks think if you need coaching in order to answer the question. Are synagogs preaching hate as well, and buddhist temples, what about the pope, a wiretap on his line would be very interesting? Stereotypes are convenient when you are too lazy to actually do what is needed to stop terrorism.
    if the churches are preaching death...
    "If" is the key word here and it has a very big meaning for such a little word. Roomey proposes to surveil Mosques and foreign students (all foreign students?) irrespective of any "if" that might apply.

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#29)
    by Sailor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:54 PM EST
    1.7 billion muslims; what percentage are terrorists?

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#30)
    by kdog on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:54 PM EST
    Wiretaps require a warrant, to get a warrant you need probable cause. Then again, in the post Patriot Act America, who the hell really knows. It's open season for the govt. to abuse power.

    Now charley wants to persecute people for thought crimes. How positively Orwellian!

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#32)
    by squeaky on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:54 PM EST
    char-you get right on it, terrorists are hiding under your floorboards, go git em. BTW-How are you doing at policing your own white boys. You sound like quite the racist. No doubt a card carrying member of the KKK, unless perhaps, you have been rejected because your blood is not as pure as you would like it to be.

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#33)
    by squeaky on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:55 PM EST
    char-you are rambling inchoherently. What are you doing to poilce your own people? Israelies were the first suicide bombers in '48. And they have been continuing a program of terror ever since. You deflected the link above as:
    you attach some difficult to understand relevance to labeling.
    Try reading it. linked text
    George Bush and John Ashcroft don’t want you to hear about White Terror, understandably fearing that the lyrics of white supremacy strike the same racial chords as the Pirates’ own War on Terror theme, itself a rearrangement of the many martial tunes written throughout American history in praise Manifest Destiny. Less than a decade ago Timothy McVeigh’s band of terrorists got carried away with the logic of America as a White Man’s Country, and may have cost the Republicans the White House in 1996. That’s why the homeland security colors didn’t change in May of this year, when federal agents arrested a white racist couple dealing in weapons of mass destruction in a small town near Tyler, Texas. The feds seized a cyanide bomb capable of unleashing a deadly, poison cloud, chemicals and components for additional WMDs, gas masks, 100 conventional bombs, an arsenal of automatic weapons, silencers and half a million rounds of ammunition. The bust went unreported last Spring, although George Bush was said to have been regularly briefed about the “ongoing” investigation. Finally, the Dallas-Fort Worth CBS affiliate broke the story on November 26, when longtime militiaman and traveling gun merchant William J. Krar and his common-law wife pled guilty to possession of a chemical bomb and lesser charges. The December 10 issue of Intelligence Squad got it just about right: “Suddenly it becomes clear why John Ashcroft isn’t going to make a big deal out of nailing these guys: they are essentially a more extreme version of Ashcroft himself.” The Bush men conceal the existence terrorists, as if embarrassed by their own kind.
    Intellegence Squad puts it in perspective with this:
    This is what happens when people resort to lazy, racist practices like ethnic profiling to determine who is and is not a threat to our safety. While more than a thousand Muslims were locked-up in the months following 9/11 – resulting in the capture of not one single terrorist – white supremacists like these three were free to operate without the encumbrance of race-based suspicion hampering their operations. (In fact, they weren’t even initially under investigation; the FBI had to be clued-in to the operation by a New York resident who had received a package from one of the terrorists by accident.) Racial profiling isn’t just inefficient, ineffective, and immoral. Sometimes it’s dangerous.
     

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#34)
    by Edger on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:55 PM EST
    kdog:
    Let's implant everybody with an internal listening device at birth so we can hear everything everyone ever says....forever. You know...to be "safe".
    Have you ever had that small mole behind your "right" ear closely examined or xray'd?

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#35)
    by kdog on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:55 PM EST
    No edger, I should get that checked out:) I will promise you that when drivers licenses and passports have computer chips in them, I'm taking a hammer to them.

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#37)
    by jimakaPPJ on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:55 PM EST
    Sailor writes:
    Can anyone tell me the skin tone, nationality, religion and terrorsist training camp the convicted OK City bombers had in common?
    Since that group has been taken out, who cares? Ernie writes:
    (ppj)Can anyone tell us how many of the 9/11 terrorist hijackers were in the country on student visas?
    (Ernie) And how many non-hijackers were in the country on student visas at the time?
    All moslems on student visas are not hijackers. But I believe a large number of the 9/11 hijackers were here on student visas. So: What was the number?

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#38)
    by Edger on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:55 PM EST
    kdog:
    I will promise you that when drivers licenses and passports have computer chips in them, I'm taking a hammer to them.
    That's when I might just take a long, long walk into the pacific northwest woods... :)

    Massachusetts should have been surrendered to the French a ling time ago. There should be cameras and wiretaps everywhere. If you are not doing anything wrong, what’s the harm? Cry right to privacy all you want. People that lost family and friends in NY, DC and Penn had the right not to have there friends and family killed. Would you trade your "right to privacy" for the lives of your family and friends? I think not.

    So: What was the number?
    As far as I can tell from this article, the answer is one out of the 19. Out of a million students...so the odds were one in a million that anyone here on a student visa was a hijacker.

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#41)
    by squeaky on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:56 PM EST
    char-Jew baiting? WTF are you coming from, seems far from the ground.

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#42)
    by jimakaPPJ on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:03:57 PM EST
    Ernie:
    Investigators say at least two and as many as eight of the hijackers had fraudulent visas. They also found that at least six of the hijackers violated immigration laws by overstaying their visas or failing to attend the English language school for which their visas were issued.
    CNN Link

    This is in response to Kdog who said : **Somebody should explain the concept of "probable cause" to this un-american s.o.b. In America, you don't spy on people without probable cause that they are breaking the law. ** actually, that is false. In america, probable cause is needed to conduct searches in areas where the person has a right to privacy. Spying, ie surveillance is often done w/o probable cause, and probable cause is not needed under the constitution to do surveillance. It is legal to surveil people in a public place, or a right where the public has access as invitees or licensees, with far less than probable cause. there is also nothing illegal about govt. agents attending mosque services (a form of surveillance) and recording their observations there. probable cause is not needed. they have the same right as anybody else does to witness the proceedings. probable cause is needed for searches, not for "spying" or surveillance. also, recording cars coming and leaving, and or taking pictures of those coming and leaving also does not require probable cause. this was/is a common tactic used against organized crime, for instance. no probable cause required as for wiretapping, that would require probable cause, in most cases. having an agent watch mosque services and record them, would not require probable cause

    They also found that at least six of the hijackers violated immigration laws by overstaying their visas or failing to attend the English language school for which their visas were issued.
    English language school? oh yeah... gotta worry about all those foreign students who were able to get into MIT, don't ya know.... it's much easier to get into MIT or BU than some silly english language school....... students... scary!

    PPJ...guess you didn't like the answer, so you had to move the goalposts?

    Re: Gov. Romney Proposes Wiretapping Mosques and S (none / 0) (#46)
    by kdog on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 01:04:03 PM EST
    jabo...By spying, I was referring to the illegal wiretapping proposed. The rest (harassing, taking pictures, undercover infiltration, etc.)may not be illegal, but I consider it unethical. And unnecessary. Just because the state gets away with certain unsavory things when going after gangsters or drug dealers doesn't make it right.